4 ms·

A lot of Ebonics is slang. Is this really about sounding black, or is it just about sounding unprofessional? What if I went to a job interview and said "dude" a

by readme 14y ago

A lot of Ebonics is slang. Is this really about sounding black, or is it just about sounding unprofessional? What if I went to a job interview and said "dude" and "bro" every other word (lets assume I'm not interviewing at a startup)? Infotainment distorting reality to fit its presentation.

gamegoblin 14y ago
You are precisely pointing out the idea of the article. African American Vernacular English (often referred to as Ebonics) is just another dialect of English that is studied by linguists just as any other. Much of it is influenced by slang and pop culture. The conclusion one might draw from your comment and the research is that to most Standard American English speakers, AAVE sounds unprofessional. I suppose I don't see how there is any distortion going on.
- tirrellp 14y ago
  You got it backward. Slang and pop culture are influenced by AAVE.
  - gamegoblin 14y ago
    I don't see why you are implying it to be a one way connection (and I certainly was not). It is a back-and-forth relationship. Often some rap song becomes wildly popular, and it makes use of a novel word combination, or even invents a new word, which then quickly finds its way into AAVE. Alternatively, many regional words or phrases in AAVE get used by a rapper who gives the word or phrase a wider audience, which then propagates throughout the larger community. This is a bit of an oversimplification (one could do a linguistics PhD on this topic alone) , but, to conclude, I believe it goes both ways.
    - tirrellp 14y ago
      I'm implying that its more often, something that is already a part of AAVE and becomes popularized in a song. This is, generally speaking, the linguistic direction that new language takes, from the vernaculars into the core.
- readme 14y ago
  Well, I think the first big red flag is that we have public schools which teach the standard dialect of English used in business, as well as the proper pronunciation of words. Then, certain people decide to ignore that and promote their own culture. That's fine with me, but if they suffer consequences because of it they will have to endure that.
solox3 14y ago
> Is this really about sounding black, or is it just about sounding unprofessional? Either...? Typically, cultural immersion with a lack of "code-switching." That is, if you hang around black people, you begin to sound black. This is true for all cultures. You raise a good point, though, that Americans stereotype "sounding black" with "hanging around black people", and "hanging around black people" with lower averages for maximum level of received education, and transparently correlating that with (10% lower) income. There is much to learn about how much the brain does behind our backs.
dizzystar 14y ago
There was no mention in the article about Ebonics. The article states you "sound black." All that means is that your accent sounds black, or at least, not Midwestern Suburban American. What you are describing is someone that does not represent a minimal standard of professionalism, which is a very different thing. My god, sometimes I wonder where people on Hacker News comes from. You mean to tell me you never heard Will Smith talk? He sounds totally black and totally educated. You never worked with a person that has a "black" accent? If there is any real fault to this article, it is that the study was presumably done in and around Chicago, where racism to a level that offensive to any taste, is rampant. This culture of racism is what the article is attempting to describe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo1LPf9mnyU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo1LPf9mnyU
- mc32 14y ago
  People from Cape cod switch to local Boston accent when in Boston. Lots of Britons switch to a London accent when necessary. There is the dominant language which tends to have prestige and speakers of the lesser dialects (not as widespread, accepted, dominant, etc) tend to code switch, as necessary (as they feel appropriate). Even when speaking a second language I did the same. There was what people spoke and what one was taught (in Chinese). Even today I do this. When talking to friends I speak one way, when talking in a professional setting I speak differently --tend to enunciate better and drop the slang, drop contractions and shorthand and the uhms and ahhs, etc. I've seen guys with 'blue collar' speech let go before guys with more educated speech --the blue collar-speech guy was probably better at what he did than the other, but the blue collar guy could be insensitive, as it were, less refined in dealing with others. With regard to names. When I was in the East, I adopted a local first and last name. It's what people kind of expected of me. Some people just Sinolized my North American name, on the other hand.
- argv_empty 14y ago
  My god, sometimes I wonder where people on Hacker News comes from. You mean to tell me you never heard Will Smith talk? He sounds totally black and totally educated. You never worked with a person that has a "black" accent? And given this distinction between "sounding black" and "sounding unprofessional," one might harbor some doubt as to whether the study in question controlled for perceived professionalism when estimating the effect of perceived blackness. One might even go so far as to post a comment suggesting that factor might have been overlooked or conflated with the phenomenon being estimated.

by readme 14y ago

gamegoblin 14y ago

You are precisely pointing out the idea of the article. African American Vernacular English (often referred to as Ebonics) is just another dialect of English that is studied by linguists just as any other. Much of it is influenced by slang and pop culture. The conclusion one might draw from your comment and the research is that to most Standard American English speakers, AAVE sounds unprofessional. I suppose I don't see how there is any distortion going on.

tirrellp 14y ago
You got it backward. Slang and pop culture are influenced by AAVE.
- gamegoblin 14y ago
  I don't see why you are implying it to be a one way connection (and I certainly was not). It is a back-and-forth relationship. Often some rap song becomes wildly popular, and it makes use of a novel word combination, or even invents a new word, which then quickly finds its way into AAVE. Alternatively, many regional words or phrases in AAVE get used by a rapper who gives the word or phrase a wider audience, which then propagates throughout the larger community. This is a bit of an oversimplification (one could do a linguistics PhD on this topic alone) , but, to conclude, I believe it goes both ways.
  - tirrellp 14y ago
    I'm implying that its more often, something that is already a part of AAVE and becomes popularized in a song. This is, generally speaking, the linguistic direction that new language takes, from the vernaculars into the core.
readme 14y ago
Well, I think the first big red flag is that we have public schools which teach the standard dialect of English used in business, as well as the proper pronunciation of words. Then, certain people decide to ignore that and promote their own culture. That's fine with me, but if they suffer consequences because of it they will have to endure that.

solox3 14y ago

> Is this really about sounding black, or is it just about sounding unprofessional? Either...? Typically, cultural immersion with a lack of "code-switching." That is, if you hang around black people, you begin to sound black. This is true for all cultures. You raise a good point, though, that Americans stereotype "sounding black" with "hanging around black people", and "hanging around black people" with lower averages for maximum level of received education, and transparently correlating that with (10% lower) income. There is much to learn about how much the brain does behind our backs.

dizzystar 14y ago

There was no mention in the article about Ebonics. The article states you "sound black." All that means is that your accent sounds black, or at least, not Midwestern Suburban American. What you are describing is someone that does not represent a minimal standard of professionalism, which is a very different thing. My god, sometimes I wonder where people on Hacker News comes from. You mean to tell me you never heard Will Smith talk? He sounds totally black and totally educated. You never worked with a person that has a "black" accent? If there is any real fault to this article, it is that the study was presumably done in and around Chicago, where racism to a level that offensive to any taste, is rampant. This culture of racism is what the article is attempting to describe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo1LPf9mnyU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo1LPf9mnyU

mc32 14y ago
People from Cape cod switch to local Boston accent when in Boston. Lots of Britons switch to a London accent when necessary. There is the dominant language which tends to have prestige and speakers of the lesser dialects (not as widespread, accepted, dominant, etc) tend to code switch, as necessary (as they feel appropriate). Even when speaking a second language I did the same. There was what people spoke and what one was taught (in Chinese). Even today I do this. When talking to friends I speak one way, when talking in a professional setting I speak differently --tend to enunciate better and drop the slang, drop contractions and shorthand and the uhms and ahhs, etc. I've seen guys with 'blue collar' speech let go before guys with more educated speech --the blue collar-speech guy was probably better at what he did than the other, but the blue collar guy could be insensitive, as it were, less refined in dealing with others. With regard to names. When I was in the East, I adopted a local first and last name. It's what people kind of expected of me. Some people just Sinolized my North American name, on the other hand.
argv_empty 14y ago
My god, sometimes I wonder where people on Hacker News comes from. You mean to tell me you never heard Will Smith talk? He sounds totally black and totally educated. You never worked with a person that has a "black" accent? And given this distinction between "sounding black" and "sounding unprofessional," one might harbor some doubt as to whether the study in question controlled for perceived professionalism when estimating the effect of perceived blackness. One might even go so far as to post a comment suggesting that factor might have been overlooked or conflated with the phenomenon being estimated.